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Diagnosing Asperger's - Changing Our Focus from Symptoms to People

Where Does Asperger's Come From?

So where does Asperger's comes from? Before I tell you, allow me to describe a quality which underlies the whole of Emergence Personality Theory. This quality? Blamelessness; the idea that no one consciously causes their pain. This includes the parents of kids with Asperger's. Not one of them ever causes their child to get Asperger's.

Where does it come from then? Remember, I'm a personality theorist. Thus, I would never see logic alone as the proof my point of view is true. Logic is simply too cold and impersonal. To me then, either the ideas feel true to both my head and heart or they're not a condition of human personality.

So how do we find ideas that feel true to both the head and heart? Simple. Whatever condition we seek to describe must have once been normal. For instance, it was once normal for all of us to focus on sensation at the expense of our social relationships. When? In the first six months of life. Unfortunately, some babies never expand beyond this focus. Thus, they incur the condition we call, Kanner's Autism.

In the second six months of life, we all have another norm. We focus on learning how to use the ability we mastered in our first six months; sensation itself, to sense the things in our environment. Here again, some few babies unfortunately never focus beyond this point. In their case, we call what they have, OCPD; Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. The compulsion to sense the things in their environment at the expense of connecting to people.

And Asperger's then? Asperger's comes into being sometime during a baby's second year of life. How? Well consider what is normal for babies to focus on during this stage in their lives. They focus on learning to understand the things they've learned to sense in the prior stage of their development. Thus, if babies do not move past this focus, they remain intensely interested in learning for learning's sake, even to the point wherein they never learn to connect to people.

Is there a fourth norm then? Absolutely. From age two to age four, kids normally rebel against any pressure put on them to simple parrot what other folks have learned. The "terrible two's," remember? So what does this turn out to be if the baby never loses this focus? ADD. Attention Deficit Disorder. And yes, I know medically minded folks now call this condition, ADHD. However, it seems incredibly silly to diagnose a kid as having ADHD without HD. Which happens to be the most common version of this lab rat label.

What Could We Be Doing To Better Help These Folks?

So what could we be doing to better help these folks? Well, in the case of Asperger's, we could be focusing our efforts on getting these folks to make "connecting" more important than "information."

Notice, I haven't simply said, teach them better social skills. In truth, teaching mouth readers to read eyes is a lot easier that you might imagine. In fact, given they believe you have something valid to say, folks with Asperger's are among the best folks of all to teach.

What else could we be doing? We could stop telling them they have a disease. They do not. They have a style of relating to the world which was once normal for all of us but no longer is. Even Dr. Iknowbest was once like this.

During this time, we all made learning the meaning of things our special interest. Moreover, in babies aged one to two, this focus is absolutely normal.

In people with Asperger's, however, this tendency never leaves them. Thus, what was once normal now impairs their very ability to see the beauty in people. And renders them unable to do much more than parrot authentic social connections. The very thing that ADD kids hate doing. Which in part explains why AS kids have the most difficult time with ADD kids.

What else could we be doing to help? For one thing, we could pay more attention to the way "focusing on information more than people" plays out in the very nature of peoples' language skills. In my work, I call this natural tendency, being "fussy" rather than "fuzzy."

For example, in one case, I taught the mom of a man with Asperger's why asking him to clean his room put him into a full blown panic attack. I explained to her that to her son, her requests for him to clean his room required he fully grasp the nature of cleaning rooms. Not just his room. All rooms. Moreover, that without this comprehensive level of understanding, he simply didn't know where to begin. Thus, his panic and resistance.

As I told this mother these things, I saw this man vigorously nodding his head in agreement. At which point, I turned to him and explained that when his mother said these things, she was merely asking him to "do something to make your room look a little better. Anything."

"Fuzzy" and "fussy." Two very different qualities. Especially when applied to language. The ability to help here would come from teaching both those with Asperger's, and those who do not have it, to speak to each other in the other's language. In effect, they both become bilingual, in that they both learn to speak "fussy" and they both learn to speak "fussy."

Learning this alone has changed my whole outlook on the world. As well as allowing me to socially connect to others for the first time in my life.

Lastly, one more thing we could be doing is we could stop reminding people with Asperger's that some few folks with Asperger's became world changers. Why stop saying this? Because this only makes them, and me, feel even more inept. And more like failures.

People with Asperger's are not failures. They are simply in the minority, both language wise and interest wise. Moreover, to see this as true, simply imagine our world were it not for people like them. Easier in some ways. Yes. Certainly. But without the special interests of those few who have changed the world? I doubt I'd even be writing on this computer, let alone have ever had a chance to become a somewhat normal human being.

Finally, to the Dr. Iknowbest's of the world, I sincerely pray you'll reconsider. I know that underneath it all, you too want to help these folks and make the world better. Please know, however, that no good can ever come from treating warm human beings like they are cold scientific data. And while this approach works fairly well on things like rocks and clouds, it downright stinks at helping people. We humans are just too complex. And too spiritually minded.

I write this with high hopes and warm regards,

Steven

P. S. For those who would like to read a more in depth explanation for this way of defining Asperger's, as well as it's etiology, see The Four Autism's. From there, you'll find a number of links to further explore this approach. As well as how Emergence Personality Theory explains the rest of what we think, feel, say, and do. Blamelessly, of course.

The Four Autisms http://theEmergenceSite.com/Tech/TechIssues-Autism-OCD-Aspergers-ADD.htm

The Social Paradox of Asperger's http://theEmergenceSite.com/Tech/TechIssues-Aspergers-Big4.htm

What's it like to have Asperger's? (a young mother asks) http://theEmergenceSite.com/Trans/Trans_Aspergers-Autism.htm

Steven Paglierani is a writer, teacher, personality theorist and therapist whose work on human consciousness is read weekly by thousands all over the world. He is the author of Emergence Personality Theory, and his mission is to make the world better for children, by restoring and deepening peoples' love of learning.He can be read or reached at his site, http://theEmergenceSite.com

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